Reader asks: “Is this whole freelance thing worth it?”

“Is this whole freelance thing worth it?” It’s a somewhat pessimistic question, but one that I hear with some frequency from readers and students. Corollaries include “I worry about machine translation putting us out of business.” “I’m 57 and only plan on working for another 8-10 years.” “I’m working too hard for the amount of money I’m making.” “I thought I wouldn’t need to market this much.” “Between self-employment tax and paying my own benefits, I have to charge so much more than I thought.”

I’ve been there, grasshopper. When I started freelancing in 2002, I had the “is this worth it” conversation with myself about three times a day. Fourteen years in, here’s my take on some of these concerns.

On the negative side, just to get it out of the way:

I don’t lose sleep over machine translation. When computers are writing great books, I’ll worry. In terms of the effect on my business right now, I don’t worry. And for the record, I’m not an MT hater. I use Google Translate myself (when is that museum in Italy open and closed?). But I do think that at some point, we’ll feel MT eating into the lower end of the translation market. And inevitably, that will have some disruptive effect on the rest of the industry. Again, this is not keeping me awake, but I think we’ll feel it at some point.

Freelancing is really, really not for everyone. And if it’s not for you, it’s OK. It’s not a defect. You can have a salaried job and still be smart, and driven, and even entrepreneurial.

As independent work becomes more of a viable career option, more people are doing it. That causes its own disruptions. When I started freelancing in the early aughts, “I’m a freelancer” was about half a step above “I’m basically unemployed and don’t want to say it.” But in 2016, that’s not the case. Lots more people see freelancing as perhaps more stable than traditional employment. As compared with my early freelance days, I see more competition at the high end of the market, and more of a struggle to make a living at the low end. Personally I think that most “word professions” have followed a similar trajectory. Freelance writers deal with this too: lots more people pitching to the high-end clients, and “are you serious???” rates at the low end.

You probably have to earn more than you think. If you want to be a “forever” freelancer, you need a similar level of financial security to someone with a traditional job. That means a few things. It means you’re re-investing in your business (conferences, courses, computer upgrades, memberships). It means you’re saving for retirement. You have a rainy day fund so that you won’t be destitute if you can’t work for a few months. You can take enough time off to recharge and enjoy life. You’re not in perpetual overtime mode to make ends meet. And in order to do that, you’re looking at a pretty big number.

Freelancing is a (freaking) lot of work. Let’s say we rank people in most salaried jobs on a scale of 1-10. Some companies will only retain the 9s and 10s, but a lot of companies out there are doing the opposite. They’re only getting rid of the 1s and 2s. They’re promoting the 9s and 10s, and everyone else (3-8) is warming the chair and drawing a salary. In the freelance world, your tail is on the line every single day that you go to work. If you’re not a 9 or a 10, clients may just move on and find someone else. Being the director of marketing, IT person, customer service rep, accountant, bookkeeper, office cleaner, general admin person, AND doing the actual translation work puts a lot on your plate.

You will never be able to stop marketing. Unless, I guess, you work for big agencies that will always need you, and you never raise your rates. Otherwise, you always need to replenish the client pipeline. This year I lost a big direct client (literally) overnight, because they hired an employee who took over the translation work. Agencies will go out of business, or shift their own focus. If you cannot make yourself market, freelancing isn’t the right job.

But on the other hand (phew…I was waiting for this point, because I love my job and I want you to love it too!):

Pretty much any index you read will rank translation and interpreting as in-demand, fast-growing careers. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 29% increase in the demand for translators and interpreters through 2024. If my own teenage daughter wanted to become a translator or interpreter, I would wholeheartedly encourage her. Overall, I feel very positive about our industry and our job prospects.

Translation is a just plain awesome job if you love languages, writing, and learning new things. Translation has made me realize that I could never do a boring job. I can do a hard job, or a stressful job, or a job that requires ongoing professional development. But to me, boredom at work is death. Translation is a good job if you share that sentiment.

Your income potential may be higher than at a salaried job. For example, there are few to no in-house jobs for French to English translators here in Colorado. And I have just about zero desire to move to a major city. But by freelancing, I can run a thriving business from basically anywhere. When people comment that, “it must be hard to make ends meet when you’re self-employed,” I actually see the complete opposite side of that coin.

The freelance quality of life is an enormous factor. Don’t ignore it. This depends on your situation. Some people don’t mind, and even enjoy, the 9-5 culture. But I’ll use my own example: what would it take for me to accept an in-house job? Well, it would have to replace my freelance income (perhaps not in terms of cash, but including benefits and other compensation). It would have to let me leave work in time to be home when my kid gets home, so that I can take her to her after-school activities. I’ll make up the hours at other times, but I need a break at 3:00. It would have to let me reshuffle work when other members of my family (husband, parents) need me. It would have to give me 6 weeks of complete vacation (no paying work), plus another 2-3 weeks of “paid vacation,” when I’m working part-time from another location. And realistically, those factors are very, very unlikely to happen. At least not without a significant hit to my career advancement potential. So for those reasons alone, freelancing is very, very worth it for me.

I’ll also say: the classic work/life balance example is kids. People who want to be home with their kids, or be home when their kids get home, etc. But as my own daughter gets older, I can see that the work/life factor doesn’t end there. For example now that I have a shred of free time, I’ve gotten into playing the lute. Then I found two (very patient) retired women who were willing to incorporate me into a little music group. We play together one morning a week, which I could never do with a salaried job. So, I also think it’s time to broaden the work/life focus beyond kids, and into “having a life outside work.”

Readers, thoughts on this? Advice on how to assess the “is it worth it?” factor for newbies?

I enjoy reading your posts every time they come through to my mailbox. I had never taken the time to leave a comment so far, but this time I HAD TO !
Indeed, I have only been a freelancer a year but I already see all the good (and also not so good sometimes) aspects of it. But today, I especially want to comment on how great being a freelance (translator) can be. Just like you, I enjoy managing my own time, being there for my kids at the end of the school day, taking time off whenever I please…
I also enjoy not having a “bossy boss”, not having to report to someone except to my clients (completely different thing). I believe this can make a big difference for a lot of people. There is so much pressure on the workplace these days, especially in big companies where, if you are stuck at the bottom, you never get enough room to grow…
Becoming a freelance means a world of opportunities opens up to you. Of course, things don’t just happen, you have to push for them sometimes (often ?) but everything you do, you do it for you, and you see the results of it all. In corporate America (or corporate France as far as I am concerned !), it doesn’t quite work like that. You just get to work on a little part of the project and then hand it over to someone else and most of the time, if you ever hear of your own ideas, they have somehow become someone else’s !!!
So I love freelancing, I love sharing my ideas and getting credit for it, I love getting that sense of accomplishment, and would not go back to a salaried job for the world !
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I have learned a lot through them and through your book as well !
Best,

I wholeheartedly agree with especially the last point, which left me thinking what an employer would have to offer me. Yes, match my salary, but also let me work on Saturday afternoon instead of Monday morning. Take a couple of hours off in the afternoon when it’s sunny during the week so I can go for a bike ride. Turn up unwashed and in my pjyamas (doesn’t happen often, but it’s nice to have the option). Not turn up at all, or leave early if there’s no work to do… Freelance life is good 🙂

Thanks, Elaine! And yes, yay for bike rides. A great point that you make is about having to be at work when there’s no work to do. For example my husband works in IT, and part of what he’s paid for is *just to be there* in case something goes wrong. And personally, I couldn’t take that: if there’s no work to be done and I’m doing fine financially, I’d rather do something else. So that’s something to consider too! Thanks for your comment.

I’m a tech writer and translator (more the second than the first one, as for where my heart is). I decided to take a step aside from my freelance job because the situation helped me taking that decision. I don’t regret it; the in-house job has helped grown a lot (a lot of a lot) as for knowledge, experience, networking and, most important -for me-, to challenge myself.
Now I’m putting under serious consideration going back to my pijamas, my background music and my translations. It’s been almost two years since the last time I typed a translated word. I do really miss those days.
I can say that I’ve tasted the two flavors… Now it’s time to make a new decision. I hope I can go back to my first love.

Thanks for your posts! I’ll share them with some fellow translators (specially those who have just graduated and those who are still studying). Thanks!!!!

Thanks so much for reflecting on this, for always being so careful and wise to weigh on the pros and cons, both sides of the coins, when addressing controversial issues such as whether freelancing is, actually, worth it. Yes, this is still a controversial issue, even when the whole freelancer concept is now becoming more popular, less awkward to many people’s ear and more tempting to that of new generations.

Recently, I met a colleague who lives nearby. He told me he was working in house as he couldn’t make it as a freelancer. He literally constructed his utterance on this X leads to Y basis, as if he couldn’t have helped it anyway. I was a bit taken-aback—for me there’s more to freelancing than meets the eye. I mean, of course the famous pair freelancing/going in-house is kind of ever-present, but is it really about “Plan A or plan B, whatever”? When I asked why he put it that way, he mentioned all the negative aspects of freelancing (which may not be so negative, depending on how you look at it): changing income, famine periods, lack of a set schedule/timetable for work, lack of a physical environment you call work (not home!), lack of a sense of direction… While I listened carefully to his enumeration, I smiled to my insides—because I know all this depends on how you manage your time, whether you believe or not in devising a business and marketing plan, whether you know or are willing to learn to set limits for both the amount of hours that you work and whether you work, say, weekends, etc. Now, he said, as if showcasing an after-and-before experience on a TV commercial, now I know exactly where and when I have to work; I know I have to get dressed to work!; I get the paid vacation, the same, safe monthly compensation; I get to talk to other people at work; I’ve got this colleague who’s taught me the hang of it and now I’ve been promoted… Of course, this sounds great. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I could list all the downsides of an in-house job from my perspective, but the imminent question is, do I regret going freelance from the start and still choosing this work style, even when from now and then I meet a colleague along the street who’s so happy to tell me about their benefits? The truth is, I don’t. And I hope to always do what it takes to never have to regret my choice. I’ve only been in the freelance business for five years now. It may not be fourteen, but I’ve learnt a couple of lessons—not all of them the hard way, thank God!, and most of them I’ve learnt them fast.
I think freelancing puts you in a position that kind of ‘pushes’ you to reinvent yourself, your strategy, on a constant basis in order to not just stay afloat but navigate the sea of challenges—healthy, adrenaline-feeding challenges—that our profession has to offer, whether you work with direct clients or agencies or both.
I love my job and I love the fact that I can say this with a sense of truth and worthiness in every word. I love it because I choose every bit of it, with its pros and cons, with all the risk that it may entail in other people’s eyes, with all the things I’ve still not sorted out and all those I’m so proud to have handled as I have so far. I love it because every inch of how I manage it is my own doing.
Like you say in your article, Corinne, freelancing is probably not for everyone. But perhaps you never know until you’ve tried. Perhaps it takes more than a couple of months’ try to know!
When you take freelancing as an entrepreneurial activity, not just your job, you work harder, but it pays, not just in financial terms. If you develop and embody a continuous improvement mindset through self-confidence, honesty, innovation, marketing and even your social life, you can mitigate the ‘negative’ aspects of freelancing. It takes an adventurous as well as willing spirit to do so, but it’s possible and, yes, absolutely worth it!

Thanks, Delfina! Those are great points, and you have some great insights after five years of freelancing. You’re so right that for freelancers, your success or failure is *all on you* and no one else, and that has its pluses and minuses. It sounds like the person you talked to either craved or couldn’t succeed without the structure that an in-house job offers, and it’s good that he realized that. Those of us who are successful freelancers would probably say the opposite: all that matters is the results, and I don’t want someone else telling me I have to dress up, or I have to be at work at a certain time. Thanks for your comment!

Being a relative newbie myself, my advice to newbies would be to ensure they are covered financially for the first few months at least, keep expectations realistic, and bear in mind that they’re in it for the long haul. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Why do I think freelance translating is worth it?

I enjoy it. It suits me. It doesn’t feel like work. Well, tell a lie, the marketing aspect of it feels like work but the translation part doesn’t. Translation is what I want to do for the rest of my life, even beyond retirement – assuming I still have all my marbles 😉 And I don’t expect any age discrimination, either!

Karine D said that everything you do, you do it for you and that’s the beauty of this lifestyle. There isn’t the safety net of a monthly salary but that can only mean that the sky’s the limit in terms of earning potential. More time spent working equals more money in your pocket, which isn’t always the case when you have a salaried job. Other investments, such as training and time spent marketing should hopefully pay off later down the line.

On the practical level, there’s relatively little financial risk. No premises to rent, no staff to pay, no stock to buy, no huge bank loans to reimburse. As translators, we do need to invest in certain equipment and software but the outlay really isn’t that huge.

Freedom to manage my time the way I want. No commute, which for me would be a minimum of ten hours per week. If I want to work weird hours, I can.

There are no guarantees in life, of course, but I think that when armed with perseverance, passion and a healthy dose of realism it is worth giving the freelance life a try.

Thank you! That is such a great summary of some of the often-ignored bonuses of freelancing. Take the age discrimination issue…I’m 45, and have started to see that in salaried jobs, even people in their early/mid 50s may start getting the side-eye for an early retirement buyout. Not least of all because they’re expensive. But I know lots of translators in their 70s who are still going strong; partly for the money and partly because they enjoy it. Thanks very much for your comment!

Thanks! I’m not far behind you in age and it’s inspiring to hear of fellow translators going strong in their 70s and controlling their own destinies. It’s a privilege to be able to approach the future like that instead of clock-watching and counting down the years to a retirement age that will be pushed further and further back.

This was such a great, inspiring post! Sometimes I wonder whether the grass is greener on the other (in-house) side but your post is a reminder of everything that is great about freelancing so thank you! One of the huge benefits of freelancing for me overlaps with your post about how much you need to earn as a translator. I used to work 5 hours a day at most and took 9-10 weeks holiday then my partner and I separated and I suddenly had to pay the mortgage on my own. If I had been an in-house translator I would have either a) downsized to a small flat despite having 2 kids or b) asked my boss if I could work full-time and for a substantial raise (yeah right!) Because I was freelancing I decided to market myself more and managed to increase my workload and earnings by 30%. So when your personal situation changes, freelancing lets you move your goalposts and gives you so much more flexibility. Oh and the holidays!! A lot of translation agencies in Europe close for some part of August so their employees have to take leave then whether they like it or not. But because not all agencies close at the same time, us freelancers have enough work to keep us busy in August if we choose to work then (so we can go away for that cheap holiday in June if we want!)

As someone looking to break into the translation industry, your articles are immensely helpful.

I would like to ask you, which language pairs you work with?

I currently have 2 languages to translate from and one into (i.e. my mother tongue which is English). Is this enough for a decent career? I’ve heard some people also get by with just one language pair, is this also true?

And also, do you think it is possible to “study for” a specialisation without having worked in it?

I studied a language + politics for my undergraduate degree and am doing a Masters in translation, but I wish now I had done a language + law or science or something a bit more in demand.

My boyfriend studied law and consequently has tonnes of law books and it’s something I could have seen myself studying.

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